Three’s a Clan (24 page)

“So when do you want to do it?” Shelly’s voice changed. I felt the power shift again. She felt like she was in control. Fuck. What were we in for?

“Do what?” Trevor asked the question, but I wanted the answer as much as he did.

“When do you want to turn me into a hybrid?”

“Excuse me?” I am not a cuddler on my best of days, but this woman had me pulling back no matter how good her body felt. Images of Amber’s near-death transition floated over my brain. “Why are you talking about this?”

“You want me to join the Pack? I need a furry side, don’t I?”

I had wanted my mate in my house. The logistics should have been my Beta’s territory.

Trevor looked at me like I was an idiot. “She’s right, Rick. How did you think she would be coming to live with us? As an outsider?
That
would go over well.”

We were supposed to be past the hard stuff. I was supposed to be back in charge, but my mates lay snuggled together on the floor, and I felt completely incompetent to handle either of them. The control I had over the situation slipped away like sand through open hands. I didn’t want to watch my mate go through what had almost killed my daughter.

I didn’t say a word as I went downstairs. There was no point in arguing. Nobody ever said love was easy. I could only hope the Hart Clan had a werewolf-sized stash of alcohol, because I still had time before the blood worked its way back into my brain cells. I wanted to fry a few before I had to think about what had to be done next.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Trevor

At least I had blood moving around in my brain again. It was a shame I hadn’t gotten that going before Shelly brought up transitioning.

“You could have waited to bring up the whole transition thing with him, you know.” I stroked Shelly’s shoulder and ran my fingers through her hair as she sprawled across my chest. We might have stressed out Rick, but I was finally at ease.

I knew we would have to transition Shelly. She needed to become part of the Pack. We didn’t have a Clan, so having some wolf in her was necessary. We couldn’t be fucking her constantly to keep her here, so she needed to turn.

Shelly propped herself up on an elbow. She blew that soft blonde hair out of her face. Her hair was the only part of her that was soft. The only part on the outside, anyway.

“Why beat around the bush?”

“Because we could enjoy the moment, maybe?” I curled a strand of her hair around my finger and tugged.

“We don’t get to enjoy the moment. Haven’t you seen what happens when we get complacent? Matheos decide to mate with wolves to form hybrid armies behind our backs. I doubt I will ever be able to relax again.” Shelly rolled over onto her back and it was my turn to prop up.

My fingers twirled around her belly button. She stretched like a cat beneath my touches, and I reached up at the top of her bend and pinched her nipple.

“Ow, what the hell?”

“You have to stop that.” I had my mate, I could poke at her.

“Stop what?”

“Shelly, we get to be happy. All three of us have been through so much through our lifetimes, but even more so in the past year. We have paid our karmic dues. It’s time to cash in on the happiness.”

“I am trying to do something important. I am trying to be a decent human being here.” She eyed me like she didn’t believe me.

“You aren’t a human being, and I like you best when you are anything but decent.” I was done arguing. With her at least. I might have another fight on my hands with my Alpha in regards to helping our mate transition.

“What if I don’t know how to be happy?” she asked.

“We’ll figure it out together. I don’t think it would work any other way.” I kissed her hand and after I pulled her up, we walked down the stairs together naked.

We had the house to ourselves for the rest of the night. Clothes would just be a waste of time. And as I watched Shelly’s little hips swish down the stairs, I realized it would not be very cost effective either. I would rip off anything that dared disrupt the perfection of her body.

Rick was doing his best to imbibe as much alcohol as possible. Even with the ten beers he had managed to swallow, he was barely buzzed. He was wasting it.

The man didn’t even acknowledge we were in the same room as him. Well, if he wanted to ignore us, Shelly and I decided to give him something really interesting to ignore. It only took me laying our mate out on the table in front of him and licking that poor little pussy we had abused for him to realize he was being stupid.

He would still argue with us later I was sure, but for the rest of the night, we spent our time in much more orgasmically productive ways.

“I told you the upstairs was soundproofed. Did you really have to fuck on the kitchen table? Shit. I can’t eat there anymore.” Amber entered her home with a bang. I knew everyone thought she was outrageous. And to be honest, I loved her all the more because she was, but she lived up to her self-imposed title of queen.

“Is that any way to talk about your stepmom?” Shelly strutted into the room. Amber should be grateful she had clothes on.

Seeing her strong and sure was amazing. I couldn’t imagine a woman more perfect to help lead our Pack. I sometimes wondered if my position as Beta would be different, now. There really wasn’t a precedent for the Beta also being mated to the Alpha’s woman.

“Barbie, I am glad you make my dad happy, but I have preggo nose and I don’t want to smell your sex with my breakfast.” Amber grabbed some cleaner and started scrubbing. “I know how Cinderella felt.”

“Are you calling me the evil stepmother?”

“Yup.” Amber held her nose and went for a bottle of Febreze next.

Shelly flipped her off. Amber stuck out her tongue. I had to remind myself that these women were centuries old.

Amber put down her bottle of cookie scented air freshener, and released her nose. “Better. So when are we going to do the transition?”

“Amber…” I knew Rick was going to tense up at his daughter’s question. I had wanted to put it off, but it turned out Amber was just as vocal and stubborn as her new stepmom.

Amber wrinkled her nose at her father. “What? Are you going to date for an eternity? I don’t know about you, but dating sucks. And mating pheromones don’t let you date anyway. You are mated. She wears your marks. She needs to turn. So why the fuck do you want to wait? If you put it off long enough something will really go wrong.”

I felt Rick tense from across the room. That was what he was worried about. He was waiting for something to go wrong. I could feel his fear, and I knew it stemmed from Amber’s near death experience with becoming a hybrid.

“It won’t be like that, Rick.” I promised. “We will all be around to support her.”

“Uh…what about you guys?” Amber asked like I was the one who was dense.

“What do you mean?” I was the one who knew what needed to happen in this case. Why did I feel like I was out of the loop when Amber and Shelly looked at each other and shook their heads.

“You need to transition too. Shelly won’t be the only one bleeding out. I was just wondering if we were taking a few different nights to do this, or if we should plan it out as one big shebang?” Amber plopped down in a chair at the kitchen table, sniffed the air and scooted her chair back.

“We don’t have to transition to have her join the Pack as a hybrid, Amber.” Rick was tensing at even the word
hybrid
.

“I know this.” Amber reached back and Jake gripped her hand. She brought his knuckled fingers to her mouth and kissed them three times. “But I also know that for the Protector to have his, or her, miasma split, they need to be with another Family. Or…in this case, a Clan.”

Amber was smiling. She was overjoyed that we would use her new term. I was trying to figure out another way around it.

“I think we should do this all at once. I figure if we are all bleeding out and in severe pain we won’t be able to worry about the others as much.” Shelly looked at me, and her eyes lost some of her hard and fast confidence.

Shelly didn’t ask for things—she demanded or she took. Now she wasn’t sure she could handle worrying about us. This was her asking if we’d be willing to do it this way. We would really have to work on Shelly feeling more comfortable expressing herself during the times she wasn’t being double penetrated.

“We need to prepare first. And we can’t exactly use the same witch blood we used for Amber. Mary is distinctly less human now.” I wondered where Mary was, but at the moment, this place was more than full enough.

“I…um…may be able to help with that.” We all turned to Shelly. “The witches that moved into the mansion decided that they were going to give us a gift for their gratitude. I assured them I would rather have a Kate Spade bag, but they bled into hundreds of plastic containers instead.”

“You have a stash of witch blood in your basement?” I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or worried.

“Cellar.” Shelly made the correction, and dropped her gaze.

“Well that makes all the difference.” I turned to Jake. “Do you think there would be any adverse effects to using harvested blood instead of fresh?”

Jake stilled, and I could tell he was accessing the miasma’s knowledge. Shelly did the same thing when she let her thoughts overtake her.

“I don’t have anything to say one way or the other.” He still held Amber’s hand on top of her shoulder.

“Do you want us to do this?” Rick brought himself into the center of our small group and stood in front of Shelly. He looked down at her. Any wolf, male or female would have been intimidated. Shelly lifted her chin and held his gaze. Her neck flexed and I was mesmerized by the movement of her matemarks.

“I need you to do this.” No apology, no hesitation. This was the first time I could remember Shelly telling us what she wanted when it didn’t involve sex.

I’d bet a million bucks that was exactly why Rick replied, “Then we do it tomorrow.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Shelly

I could do this. I could change who I had been for centuries for my mates.

My mates. That seems to be the trend lately. Hybrids for everyone. You get to be a hybrid. And you get to be a hybrid. Oprah would have a field day here.

“You’re the one who wanted to do this. You could look a little bit happier about it all,” Rick said.

I pushed up to him. He still dwarfed me, but I’ll be damned if he would take the protective mode. Who was the Protector in this relationship? That’s right. Yours truly.

“I apologize for not being excited about being drained and going through a transition. You know damn well it’s not a personal holiday. This is going to fucking hurt.” I thought about the desiccation of Amber’s body when I had watched her.

“You’re not the only one doing this, you know,” he reminded me.

The bastard had a point. We had all agreed to go the hybrid route. Completing the wolf mating would settle my body down, and I’d be damned if I was living without the men that drove me wonderfully nuts.

“You’re not doing it first.” I offered.

“The fact that it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s any less dangerous. If you don’t want to do this…” Rick let his words trail off, but he had already done his bullying in the bedroom, and even if his words told me that he wasn’t pushing, the power of his pull was enough to shove me off the hybrid cliff.

“Don’t be touchy feely right now. I still have to watch you two die.” I thought about it. “Maybe you could be an ass for a few minutes so I could enjoy it?”

Rick shook his head at me and looked toward Amber. Her belly had grown so fast. “I have a grandkid to think about watching over too.”

“You let your daughter call me granny and I will stab you in your testicles.”

“As long as you kiss them afterwards.” Rick grabbed my hand and pulled it up to his lips. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Where is Trevor? He didn’t chicken out, did he?”

“We both know I am the stronger of the two of us. Maybe he just didn’t have the stomach for this.” Rick smiled over my shoulder. “I always knew he was a wuss when it came to these things.”

“Fuck you.” Trevor put an arm around my waist and squeezed.

That retort was akin to a man hug. When you have as much testosterone as these two, it was necessary to break up the happy with a good dose of vulgarity.

“We’ll do that later. Right now. We all get to die.”

The garden behind the mansion was beautiful. Brandon had set up a spa retreat for all of the witches in the house. We were pretty sure that none of us would go insane and start attacking humans, but it didn’t hurt to be safe. And with Amber and Rick around, the possibility of a death as a result of this whole shebang was not worth the worry.

Amber’s starburst eyes were glowing in the dim light. Her wolf was really agitated lately. Her eyes were near change almost all the time. We assumed it had something to do with the pregnancy. At least we hoped so, because if that shit was permanent, Amber wouldn’t be stepping foot out in public again. Even sunglasses couldn’t cover it.

“Let’s get this going. I’m not looking forward to doing this.” Amber took stock of the important players. Everyone had overindulged. Food, blood, magic boosts—it was all done to make sure the three people being bled to death and beyond would have enough to rejuvenate them.

Brandon stood with us. He knew this meant I would be splitting the miasma. I felt bad that I was upturning the bit of stability our Family had, but Brandon was our leader. He had proved it by dealing with me. I was pledging to the Paulson Pack, or I guess it would become a Clan, as soon as this whole bloody mess was over. The Hart Clan was good and all, but somehow I doubted Amber and I could share space.

Mary was acting as assistant to Amber. Craig was our werewolf bleeder, and Jake would be acting as our hybrid food. We were only missing the witch blood.

A sound behind me had me turning.

Annabelle walked out of the entrance to the bleed room. The witches had turned it into an indoor alter space. They said reclaiming it for the coven was a great way to appease the balance. I thought it was just to make sure no vampires set foot in there again. Or at least that was my assumption until Annabelle waved us over.

“It’s set up and ready to go.”

Amber waddled forward. “Y’all get going. I have a chair set up. I am ready to stop the swelling in my ankles.” She started mumbling something about how super healing should apply to pregnancy woes.

“Whoa. We are going in there?” I wanted to make sure everyone knew that this wasn’t a space for us. And I was about to ask why the hell Annabelle was here when she should be somewhere getting her feet painted some kind of fancy magical color, but Amber interrupted.

“Come on, Barbie. My feet hurt. Move it.”

“But…we don’t need…”

Amber waddled up in my face. She would have gotten closer, but her belly bumped into me. The little critter inside started twisting and kicking. “Shelly, this is okay. They know what’s going on, and they agreed with me—that fresh witch blood was better than bagged.”

“I am not drinking from them.”

“I’m not waiting for you, or those men to shrivel up like a raisin and blow away from my life as dust because we thought we could work around the way things are.”

“I vowed to protect them. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Respect for the woman was high, but she was taking charge of this whole thing and it wasn’t about her this time.

“You put my best friend’s arm in my mouth and bled her over me in front of a war between battle-ready vampires and werewolves. These women are being protected by us if anything goes wrong. I got this, Shelly.” Amber inhaled sharply as her belly flopped hard. “Fuck, that hurt you little monkey.” But she rubbed her stomach with a smile. “Come on, Granny. You need to drink some blood and get ready to meet your grandkid.”

She had a point about not taking chances and maybe a bit of a point about me bleeding a human in front of a bunch of supernaturals, but Mary scored some wolfy traits and a mate out of the deal, so she turned out okay. Then I realized Amber was talking like there was more than one witch down there.

Before I could get my thoughts lined up, the whole crew had descended into the cellar. All that remained was an open door that led into darkness flanked by Trevor on one side and Rick on the other. Both men looked at me and waited. I didn’t breathe as I walked through the door. I grabbed both of their outstretched hands and they trailed behind me side by side.

This was the second time they had loved the same woman. A part of me stung at the bit of jealousy that reared up. But then I realized that I had learned to trust fate. We were together because it was meant to be, and the mating pheromones were reaching across species lines to join us like this. Lily might have been their first love, but I was their only mate.

I brought them together, and they held me steady. I squeezed both their hands and they squeezed back. I was high maintenance, and I needed them. Even more so when the bleeding tables came into view.

I was ready to get the whole song and dance started. This feeling of incompletion was hanging around when Rick, Trevor and I were together. When we were joined, it was amazing and perfect, but there was this sense that it wasn’t finished yet.

Buckles clanged against the shiny chrome base. Silver thread shone bright stitched along the leather material. There was something else. Some kind of powder along the inside. The witches really had been busy.

Three gleaming tables waited. There were drains in them. A weak stomach had never been one of my problems, but the organ wasn’t very pleased with me at the moment.

Then Kari walked through an open doorway. It was the first time I had seen her in almost a week. Her hair was cut short and her head was wrapped up in some kind of scarf that tailed down her back. She wore sleek dark jeans and a button up shirt. She met my eyes and had a smile for me, but something was off. Before I could dig into this deeper, Amber took charge.

“Hop up, folks. Welcome to the state of the art transformation station.” She patted the tables and then took the handle of a wicked looking athame from Kari.

I had to stop her from participating. “Wait.”

Kari’s voice pushed forward. “Now is not the time, Shelly. Let’s get this done. We have a lot to accomplish tonight. The cards I pulled told me a lot, and I want to get started. My body doesn’t have the stamina of all the others here with us.”

“Why do we need two witches? I get your point on having them here as a backup, but this has to be too much for you, Kari.” I didn’t want to drink from her. Although, as she basically told me to shut the fuck up, I had to wonder if seeing me drain on the same tables she was bled from would be cathartic.

“We have our plans in place. Let’s begin.” Kari waved to the table.

Suddenly the whole room zeroed in on that space. Through this journey I had taken with Jake. From meeting his mother, to knowing he was meant to do great things even when he was small enough to be just as a pesky little brother should be, to meeting the force that was his mate—this was a step further.

I had never been a stickler for rules and hierarchy, but this was a leap. Everything else I had done I had done alone. I knew my strength, and I knew I was over-qualified to take on any challenges. This wasn’t about me any longer. I was putting my life, and the lives of those I loved in the hands of people I trusted. I
had
to trust them. This wasn’t about authority, or hierarchy or stupid rules. This right here was giving up a part of myself.

Trevor and Rick’s hands smoothed the hair on my arms that had begun to stand up. They were the ones to buckle me in, and I let them. They secured me.

Amber had been in control of herself when she had turned, but we all agreed that it would be good to use restraints. They would be especially important for the men. Hearing the cries from their mate would trigger a lot of instinct that they might not be able to overcome.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sudden easy rush that encompassed my body. Warmth. Relaxation. It flowed from the bare skin that encountered the restraints.

Then Kari was over me. For a brief moment, I wondered if this wasn’t some kind of revenge. The skepticism could be blamed on the fact that the man who was supposed to take care of my Family had done everything he could to destroy it. Then I realized what the warmth was. It was magic. I was going back to that place.

The place where the circle was. I felt my body begin to detach.

“Go sister. We will take care of your body. You need not be here for the pain.”

I would have kissed her, but she didn’t follow me onto the next plane.